Hail yeah!
Giants recall miracle TD sparking them to 2012 win
What Victor Cruz remembers most is the silence.
It was the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard on a football field.
Giants quarterback Eli Manning had just connected with receiver Hakeem Nicks on a 37-yard Hail Mary touchdown on the final play of the first half in the Giants’ 37-20 victory over the Packers in the 2012 playoffs at Lambeau Field. The play gave the Giants a 20-10 lead as they sprinted into the locker room for a jubilant halftime.
“I remember just how silent Green Bay got,’’ Cruz said Thursday. “It doesn’t happen often, let alone at halftime of a playoff game. I just remember running down the field and looking up at the ball as it was in the air and looking at Hakeem and then looking back at the ball and I was like, ‘ He can catch this. Why is there no one converging on the football?’
“He went up and grabbed it and I think we went up 20-10 at that point and we really never looked back.’’
The Giants took possession of the ball on their 29-yard line with 41 seconds remaining in the half. They seemed content to run out the clock and take a 13-10 lead into halftime when Packers coach Mike McCarthy called a timeout. That changed the Giants’ mindset. Instead of Manning handing the ball off to running back Ahmad Bradshaw, he threw to him, and Bradshaw made a weaving 23-yard gain and got out of bounds at the Green Bay 37 with six seconds remaining.
Enter, “Flood Tip,’’ the name of the Giants’ Hail Mary play at the time.
The play — the first successful Hail Mary Manning had ever completed, dating back to his days as a youth in New Orleans — stunned the Packers, buoyed the Giants and set the course for the end result.
“The locker room was excited,’’ Cruz said. “We knew we still had some more game to play to finish that game, but we knew our chances were high.’’
Manning, because he rarely doles out credit to himself, of course called it luck.
“Like all Hail Marys, there’s not a whole lot of skill involved,’’ Manning said. “It’s luck. You throw it up and hopefully our guy’s in the right spot … and Hakeem Nicks a made a great catch. Definitely going into halftime at that point we were feeling really great about where we were and had a lot of momentum going into the second half.’’
The Giants’ win over the Packers, of course, propelled them toward their latest Super Bowl and it ended a Packers season that had gotten to 15-1 in the regular season.
“Yeah, they were playing good football, they were a good team,’’ Manning said. “Their offense was playing great, their defense was doing a good job of getting pressure and getting sacks on the quarterback. So we did a great job of protection, we hit some big plays, hit the Hail Mary before halftime, the defense got [four] turnovers for us.
“Things went our way that night.’’
Former kicker Lawrence Tynes, who was on the team when it beat the Packers in Green Bay four years earlier en route to a Super Bowl title, recalled the weather not being as severe as it was in 2008.
“I remember it feeling a little bit warmer than it did four years prior to that; it was 19 degrees at kickoff,’’ he said. “I just remember it was almost like the confidence we felt four years prior, when that team got in the playoffs, we just felt like we could win it all. I didn’t even realize they were 15-1 at the time.”
Incredibly, Mike Sullivan, who was the team’s quarterbacks coach at the time and is now the offensive coordinator, didn’t see the play. He had left the press box, where he was coaching from, to get to the locker room for halftime.
“It’s a long ways to get from coaches box to [the locker room],’’ he said. “It’s not like you heard cheers [from the Packers fans], but I heard some hooting and hollering from our guys and they said we scored a touchdown. So I didn’t see it until I looked at the game film.’’
Tackle Will Beatty, who was a member of the 2011 team but was out with an eye injury, called this return trip to Green Bay “an opportunity that many people don’t have,’’ adding, “Guys are home right now wishing they were in it. We’re going into Green Bay with all the nostalgia. Last time we had to go into Green Bay and beat Green Bay. Now it’s just like, ‘Let’s do it again.’ ’’